Avoiding Central Realities: Narrative Terror and the Failure of French Culture under the Occupation

Abstract

Several independent studies have recently examined the response of French law and literature to the Occupation period of World War II. Works such as Marrus and Paxton's Vichy France and the Jews1 and Lottman's The Left Bank2 have scrutinized French jurisprudence on the one hand, and the literary community on the other. I may be understating it to say that neither French institution emerges from these studies in a very positive light. What caused the literary and legal acceptance, or even furtherance, of Nazi policies in occupied France? The question is significant not only because it has not been adequately answered, but also because Americans in those disciplines ought to consider the lessons of that period. I would suggest in a very tentative way that there may be some subtle common causes behind the failures of both law and literature in wartime France. Both found it possible, so to speak, to avoid central realities. Since the very notion of reality is still being called into question, partially I think because of our difficulty in coming to grips with the meaning of the Holocaust, it is necessary